User engagement and PR

[Innovimax SARL]

Dear Muarata San,

Let me phrases some of your point differently

== National bodies ==

JTC 1/SC 34/WG 4 involves national bodies, it means the implementer
have to cope with their national bodies FIRST OF ALL before being
involved in WG 4
My understanding (and I think people here will confirm this), many
implementors are represented in the mirror committee of SC 34 in many
countries (it is the case for France)
So probably the problem is not representativity by itself, but
permeability of those representative to access WG 4

It should be interesting that we dress up a list of representative of
people involved in "mirror" committees and then try to "help" those
people to participate

I myself try to make more small business companies being involved in
the French mirror committee, since a recent law make now this free for
them to participate (nonwithstanding the price of the time, effort and
travel that remains)

== Readable archive of the mailing list ==

So now let's spot a real problem : the archive of the mailing list are
not readable so few people participate. I already experienced this in
CSS WG. So I think we FIRST need to solve this issue in order to move
forward

== New open to public mailing list ==
Could we create something like e-SC34-WG4-public mailing list where we
could discuss thing with people and push some general discussion in
there

I think this will help people keeping in touch with what we do

== Status of participant ==
What would be the status of people participating to WG4 that HAVE NOT
BEEN SENT by there national Body ? How can we ensure IP ?

Regards,

Mohamed

On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 10:43 AM, MURATA Makoto (FAMILY Given)
<eb2m-mrt at asahi-net.or.jp> wrote:
> Dear colleagues,
>
> Our SC34 chair is preparing his JTC1 presentation and I had a chance
> to help him.  This experience makes me reconsider WG4.  User
> engagement is one of the titles in the JTC1 presentation template.
>
> WG4 has worked very hard.  I believe that WG4 has achieved
> a lot and I am appreciative to everybody involved.  However,
> if we would like to succeed in providing an infrastructure
> of the IT world, working hard in creating specifications
> is not good enough.  We have to sell our work to the world
> and establish good relationship with those who use OOXML.
>
> Recently, our project editor wrote:
>
>> BTW, in more than 3 years, Ecma TC45 has received only 3 or 4 emails from
>> members of the public, asking about details in the standard. I have received
>> no correspondence from the public via JTC 1, and I don't recall anyone
>> within WG4 saying they were contacted by the public and asked to submit any
>> DRs on their behalf. In short, the level of direct technical inquiry from
>> the public has been negligible.
>
> In my opinion, his observation reveals that we have to seriously
> consider user engagement or PR.  I know that successful committees in
> new standardization organizations (such as W3C, IETF, and OASIS)
> receive a lot of feedbacks from non-members.
>
> Of course, political climate is not easy, and blogsphere provides
> negative information about WG4 even now.  But we should try to improve
> the current situation.
>
> Specifically, let me ask three questions:
>
> - WG4 needs more OOXML implementors as members.  WG4 has some, but
>  not enough.  How can we attract more?
>
> - WG4 needs more feedbacks from the public.  This topic was discussed
>  in London (AHG1) and we decided not to create a publicly-available
>  web form or mailing list.  But can we now provide a better answer?
>
> - Can WG4 make it easy for non-members to follow our discussions?
>  Given the lack of feedbacks, I guess that few non-members
>  follow our discussions.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> SC34/WG4 Convenor
> MURATA Makoto (FAMILY Given)
>
>



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